In Case Of Emergency

In Case of Emergency

Not too long ago this was a shiny, new Altoid tin. It had those nice chocolate coated peppermint Altoids in it. By golly I loved those Altoids, so much so that I just had to keep the tin! Not too much later it occurred to me that I could probably make this precious tin into a piece of Art. So I figured I'd start by stripping the paint off. That was no simple task, I tell you what. I ended up having to take the Dremel to it. Eventually I won the battle and gave it an interesting brushed appearance in the process. But that just wasn't enough. Then I realized I had a lonely plastic soldier that needed a home. So I decided to get out the Dremel again and I cut out a window in the lid of the tin and put a nice little sign in the window.

Having done all that, I felt that this little tin still needed some texture - something to give it character. What could be better than a nice crusty coating of rust! So I rusted it! Yah, I did. I rusted it good! Now it finally felt like it had a story behind it. And you thought this was the story! No, this is just the foreword.

By the way, this currently does not have a clear coat on it, as I thought I'd let it rust a little more, but I'll give it a little bit of a clear coating before I send it off to it's new owner. I'd love to be able to send it without the coating, but I'd be afraid that all that lovely rust I made might rub off and that just wouldn't do.

THANKS so much for stopping by!

Damaged

I finished up this painting that's been fighting me for over a week! It has evolved somewhat beyond what I'd originally planned, but then what I'd originally planned didn't work out quite how I wanted it to and got acetone poured on it and was scrubbed off and painted over. So maybe this is better. In some ways it's not, but you don't know the difference. I mean, some of the crucial contours were lost in translation, between the original pencil sketch and the application of many layers of paint.

See! It just looks a bit outta whack to me, which could possibly be due in part to the fact that I spent the good part of a day just to get the flow of the blood just right. And I did have it just right in the original sketch! So hopefully I made up in character and texture for what I lost in form.

(That's before it was quite finished.)

This one's painted on an 8 x 10" piece of mat board, but the image takes up about 5 x 7". I painted the whole board though, so it can be framed in an 8 X 10" frame. It just felt like it needed space.

The finished pic above is a scan, so it doesn't quite capture all the detail. This piece is very textural and there's a lot of contrast between the textures. There are areas of impasto and some areas that are just washes. I'm really quite pleased with the fact that I got the opacity of the blood right the first try! Now why couldn't the rest of it have gone that way...

First Venture Into ACEO.

I'd heard about ACEOs in my quest for Art on eBay and didn't think much of it at first. Then I realized I was seeing listings for them everywhere and figured I should look into it. This resulted in my starting to collect these miniature works of art.

I found that I enjoyed the little gems so much that maybe I'd even try it myself some time. It would be a new challenge for me, as I prefer to work in a much larger scale, but it seemed doable. I just had no idea how much so until I attempted my first ACEO - a self portrait.

To me this isn't just any self portrait. Aside from it being a miniature, it is painted and in full colour, where I'd only ever done self portraits in pencil or monochromatic marker, so I wasn't even sure I could actually do it. Nonetheless, I got out my stack of playing cards, a pencil, gesso, and acrylic paints and just went for it!

(Obviously this is an enlargement, as ACEOs are 2 1/2 by 3 1/2".)

I think it came out ok. I've provided the large version to show some of the detail better, as this painting is posted on eBay, along with my other ACEOs.

You can view the listing for this painting by clicking the above image and from there you'll be able to link to my others.

THANKS so much for looking!